"Nearly every state saw a surge in visitors to its state parks during the pandemic, which brought attention to the maintenance and upgrades necessary to deal with the record crowds," Alex Brown reports for Stateline. "Now, with state budgets suddenly flush with billions of dollars in federal relief and longstanding parks issues getting newfound attention, many governors and lawmakers of both parties are directing massive investments toward their state parks."
State and national parks typically have large maintenance backlogs that were made worse by the pandemic. Many visitors to state and national parks have been first-timers who don't know park etiquette, and many visitors (new or not) have sprayed graffiti on natural formations, left human waste and trash all over the place, and damaged soil by going off designated trails.
But parks haven't had the funds to deal with that backlog. "State park leaders say their agencies are among the first to be targeted for budget cuts during tough economic times. "Between 2008 and 2019, spending on state park operations fell from $3 billion to $2.5 billion nationwide, according to the Property and Environmental Research Center, a Montana-based free market environmental think tank," Brown reports. "State park leaders across the country say it will take anywhere from a year and a half to five years to complete the projects their states are now funding. But they expect the legacy of that work to extend further." One noted that many state parks still have buildings and trails built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
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